The Last Supper - now how about a nice game of chess?

For centuries, it lay unnoticed in one dusty private library after the next. Then just over a year ago it was revealed to be a fabled volume - the only surviving copy of De Ludo Schacorum by Luca Pacioli, the Franciscan friar and mathematician. Yesterday, a new claim was put forward for the priceless, leather-bound manuscript: that its innovative and idiosyncratic illustrations are by Leonardo Da Vinci.

If true, it would mean the Tuscan polymath, while not only painting the Last Supper and inventing everything from a hang glider to a mechanical lion, had earned the humbler distinction of being the world's first, modern chess-puzzle illustrator.

De Ludo Schacorum, written in about 1500, is a collection of the sort of conundrums to be found today at the back of any up-market daily, in which the challenge is to get to checkmate in a set number of moves. It was not the first of its kind, but one of the most striking things about it, apart from the originality of its teasers, is the novelty and beauty of its illustrations.

In most contemporary depictions, the pieces were represented by letters or numbers. Two depictions used figures, but they were crude, like the chess pieces of the day.

In De Ludo Schacorum, also known as the Schifanoia (the "Boredom Dodger"), king, queen, bishop and knight are all represented by elegant and distinctive symbols.

A Milanese sculptor and architect, told the Guardian that was just one of several reasons why he was "more than certain" that the illustrations were Leonardo's.

Franco Rocco, who spent more than a year researching the issue for the owners of the manuscript, said: "I also discovered that the proportion of the pieces, and especially the pawns, coincides with the Golden Mean [an arithmetical ratio of approximately 1: 1.618], which fascinated both Leonardo and his friend Pacioli."

He said the symbol used for the queen had been used by Leonardo for the design of a fountain that figures in the so-called Atlantic Codex.

Serenella Ferrari Benedetti, cultural coordinator of the Coronini Cronberg Foundation, the non-profit making organisation that owns the manuscript, said Rocco had been "rigorous and thorough. We are absolutely certain his attribution is correct".

Others may be more sceptical. The foundation has invited the director of the Los Angeles-based Armand Hammer Centre for Leonardo studies, Carlo Pedretti, to make an independent assessment.

Leonardo met the fellow-Tuscan Pacioli at the court of the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza. He provided the illustrations for his friend's great work on the mathematics of the Golden Mean, De Divina Proportione.

When Milan fell to French forces in 1499, Leonardo and Pacioli fled to Mantua, where they were taken under the protection of the marchioness, Isabella d'Este, a chess enthusiast.

De Ludo Schacorum was dedicated to her and her husband.

Leonardo, who drew a portrait of the marchioness, is known to have understood, if not played, chess. He used a technical term from the game in one of his many manuscripts.

All trace of De Ludo Schacorum was lost until 2006, when it was found among the 22,000-volume library of the late Count Guglielmo Coronini.

The manuscript was one of a job lot of old books that the scholarly aristocrat from Gorizia in the north-east of Italy had bought in 1963 from a Venetian poet and bibliophile.

Among Luca Pacioli's many achievements was to have been the first writer to codify double-entry bookkeeping. Known as the father of accountancy, he warned that no bookkeeper should go to bed until the debits equalled the credits.